Former KNBC investigative news producer busted in child porn sting

A former investigative news producer at KNBC in Los Angeles was arrested on suspicion of distributing more than 100 child porn images and videos, according to the FBI.

Phil Drechsler, 60, accessed and shared child pornography in a group chat with more than 20 other people on the secure messaging app Telegram, an FBI agent alleged in a criminal complaint against the ex-L.A. news producer.

“Drechsler, using the alias ‘Karen Flores,’ was a member of an online community of individuals who regularly sent and received child pornography via a group chat within the Telegram application called ‘The Playground Lives,’ ” wrote Special Agent Chelsea Malone in the complaint, which was filed April 18.

Drechsler was in the group chat viewing and sharing child pornography for just under a year from August 2020 to June 2021, according to Malone. When federal agents executed a search warrant on his phone last month, they also found suspected child pornography in his recently deleted album in the Photos application.

The 60-year-old was laid off from his job at KNBC in February after being offered a buyout from the company, he tweeted at the time.

“I was offered a buyout … turned it down… was laid off with all the provisions of the buy out,” he tweeted.

While Drechsler tweeted, “I love what I do. I still feel young,” at the time of his layoff, when agents interviewed his wife on April 17, she told them that her husband had made “concerning statements about taking his own life” and then drove to Ohio with three guns, according to the complaint.

Federal agents in Ohio began surveilling Drechsler at a hotel in Cincinnati and arrested him there on April 17.

He was charged with three counts of distributing child pornography.